Use the leaves sauted with a little garlic, salt and pepper. Any where you would use spinach.
Chop the stalks add sugar, cinnmon and bake or cook on the stove top and make a jam. Use it like rhubarb. Or just cut saute like the leaves. Serve as a side dish.

Fry til bacon is crisp and onion well cooked. Sprinkle in 4 or 5 shakes of red pepper flakes. Strip the kale (or chard) off the stalk and add to bacon. Cover and cook til kale/chard has wilted considerably. Add 1/3 cup cidar vinegar and scrape up all the bits off bottom of the pan. Continue cooking a few minutes until vinegar has disapated.

Chard and onion omelet (trouchia)! Deborah Madison has a lovely recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The essentials are to saute onion first, add chard, add eggs, and lastly gruyere. You can run it under the broiler if it gets too thick to cook fully from the bottom.

My go-to chard recipe; I made it up when we had 3 rows of chard ripe all at once in the back yard:
1 red onion (can use any onion)
garlic if you have it
rainbow chard (or kale, collards, spinach, beet greens)
balsamic vinegar
goat cheese (or feta)

Chop onion and chard stems; saute in olive oil until soft and caramelizing. Meanwhile, tear chard into reasonable-sized pieces and crumble up feta or goat cheese. When onion mix is soft, add some garlic, toss in the chard leaves, and stir just until leaves are wilted. Then drizzle with balsamic vinegar and sprinkle goat cheese/feta on top. Cover, turn off heat, and get out plates and silverware. Come back and all will be a yummy tasty mess!

We had a stuffed meatloaf that called for spinach, but used chard in its place. I had chopped the chard up for easier storage, but you can leave it in whole or half leaves. Make up your meatloaf mixture, put half in the bottom of the pan, layer the greens in next, then the rest of the meatloaf on top. It actually works really well in a crockpot, not a huge one though.

Adding it to smoothies. You could freeze it in a bag with other smoothie fruits, have it all in one place, then just drop it in a blender with some milk/yogurt and you have your smoothie.

Rainbow chard is FABULOUS. Separate the stem from the leaf (you can eat both; the stem just takes longer to cook, but it’s actually the sweetest part!) and sautee it in some garlic and olive oil with a little sprinkle of salt and pepper. Add the leaf after a few minutes of cooking and cook until soft. It’s YUPER yum. It also plays well with summer squash, goat cheese, and onion. And I’d imagine Linda’s bacon recipe is incredible. Just don’t throw out the stem – a lot of people do, but it’s SOOO good.

I just made my first swiss chard recipe also. Here is the one I made that my son and husband both liked. I did add some white wine and used sliced sweet Italian chicken sausage. Also, don’t throw away the stems as I did – give them extra time to soften. Cut the chard in small pieces for this recipe.

Chard is my favorite green to add to fruit smoothies. It grinds well and adds just a drop of tanginess. 1-2 leaves (stem’s fine too) into the blender with the rest.

You can sub chard in anything you’d use spinach or turnip greens in. It makes a great quiche or omelet filling. I use any kind of greens, including chard, for eggs florentine.

I also use chard (or turnip or beet greens) in my version of 101 Cookbooks’ turnip greens tart. Warning: I don’t measure. Rough-chop the greens (I find I use at least one bunch–almost triple what she calls for), mix in plain yogurt, a couple of eggs, dijon mustard, 1-2 garlic cloves. Put in whatever savory pie crust you want to use.

Stuffed Chard Packets (from Crescent Drangonwagon’s Passionate Vegetarian)
While a little labor intensive, these are truly mouth watering. I usually substitute quinoa for the bulghur. Be careful as they are indeed addictive

Heat 1 tsp of the oil in a large, deep nonstick skillet, or one that has been sprayed with cooking spray, over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until it starts to get limp, 4 minutes. Add the carrots and chard stems. Raise the heat slightly and saute for about 3 minutes. Lower the heat to very low and add the garlic. Saute for an additional minute. Scrape the mixture into a large bowl.

Grate the lemon rind, and add 1 tsp to the vegetable mixture. Juice the lemon through a strainer into the vegetable mixture and stir blend.

Meanwhile bring a large pot of water to a vigorous boil.

Add the diced tomato, quinoa or bulghur, parsley, spearmint, raisins, and feta to the vegetable saute mixture. Toss together to blend. Taste and season with salt and lots of pepper.

Drop the destemmed chard leaves into the pot of boiling water. As soon as the leaves brighten in color and soften, less than a minute, drain quickly and rinse.

To stuff the chard leaves:
Slightly overlap the bottom of each leaf along the space where you removed the rib. This gives you a sort of long, oval-shaped leave. Mound 1/4 to 1/3 cup of the vegetable mixture into a lozenge shape on top of the overlap part. Fold the long side of the leaves in and over the filling, then roll up to make a fairly neat packet. Place the stuffed packets, seam side down, in the prepared baking dish. Tuck a tomato wedge between each chard packet and its neighbor. Drizzle the remaining oil over the top.

Note: I usually make a massive batch of these since they are slightly time consuming and I freeze them. I did this the last time I made them. Much to my delight, they froze really well in little airtight containers and still tasted wonderful as a snack when thawed.

Ricotta and Chard Pie!! Make a single pie crust, prebake that. Make a ricotta filling with 8 oz ricotta, 2 eggs, salt, pepper and any herbs you like. Fill the cooled pie shell with that. Bake at 400F for 25 minutes. Saute chard with garlic, onion, oil, salt, pepper, parsley. Top the pie with that and bake for 15 more minutes. Let cool to room temp or eat a little warmer than that. I like it straight from the fridge the next morning for breakfast.

OMGosh – so many great ideas and only one bunch of chard! I had planned to olive oil-salt-pepper it. (My only bummer thought is the loss of that fabulous color when it is cooked!) – but you guys – WOW. I’m rather torn (and now hopeful there is some chard in future CSA boxes…). I think i will try Donna’s chard recipe tomorrow (as I have all the ingredients on hand for that one). But the others are definitely on my to-do list!

And for another: sautee chopped stems with garlic, pile on roughly chopped leaves and steam until as done as you like it, toss with feta. Meanwhile poach some eggs, make toast. Pile chard on toast, top with poached egg.

Another option with dark leafy greens is to turn them into snacks! A really easy way to convince kids they are YUMMY! Wash and dry them, spray lightly with olive oil, add some seasonings if desired, maybe even a little fresh lemon juice or a little hot sauce, toss the greens, rub the leaves to get the oil and seasonings, and then stick in a dehydrator if you have one, or in your oven at the lowest temp until they dry out and become crunchy.